Big Data

The well-known three Vs of Big Data - Volume, Variety, and Velocity – are increasingly placing pressure on organizations that need to manage this data as well as extract value from this data deluge for Predictive Analytics and Decision-Making. Big Data technologies, services, and tools such as Hadoop, MapReduce, Hive and NoSQL/NewSQL databases and Data Integration techniques, In-Memory approaches, and Cloud technologies have emerged to help meet the challenges posed by the flood of Web, Social Media, Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) data flowing into organizations.

What's ahead for 2016 in terms of cloud, IoT, big data, analytics, and open source technologies? IT executives gaze into their crystal balls, and weigh in on the upcoming challenges and opportunities ahead in the next year - and beyond.

Dataguise, provider of data-centric security solutions for detecting and protecting confidential information, is now securing relational databases such as Oracle and SQL Server, as well as Teradata data warehouses, deployed on the Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure. Now Azure users can utilize big data and cloud technologies for improved business intelligence and performance.

It is often said that the only constant is change. For data executives and professionals, the coming year will only bring a lot more of it. Developments as diverse as cloud, big data, real time, NoSQL, analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) will continue to reshape enterprise data operations and opportunities as we know them. Here are 16 trends that will shape the enterprise data landscape in 2016.

SnapLogic is receiving $37.5 million of series E financing, fueling the company's expansion into the world of big data. The world's biggest technology company and private equity firms join other top tier investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition Partners and Triangle Peak Partners to provide Snaplogic with the finacing which will be used for accelerating SnapLogic's expansion with further investments in technology and extending field operations to give the company a broader reach in sales and marketing to continue growing internationally.

Couchbase today announced general availability of Couchbase Server 4.1. The new release adds full CRUD support, in addition to covering indexes and prepared statements to improve the speed of complex queries, and expands platform support to further accelerate the adoption of Couchbase by large enterprises and the developer community. The new release makes it easier for developers to build agile enterprise applications on a NoSQL database that has the architecture to operate at any scale, according to Ravi Mayuram, senior vice president, products and engineering, Couchbase.

Traditionally, the cardinal rule has been to model data first and load it later. But with new technologies and repositories such as Hadoop, NoSQL, and data lakes, and big data itself, the rule is being flipped to load first and model later. And, with SQL remaining an effective and widely embraced query language, companies have to balance working with traditional methods against the need for some of the newer methods as well.

Hortonworks, Inc. is advancing its Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) with the in-memory analytics capabilities of Spark. Apache Spark 1.5.2 will include support for Spark SQL and Spark Streaming. With the inclusion of Spark 1.5.2 on HDP, customers can get new Spark capabilities and maximize its value for the enterprise.

Hortonworks revealed upcoming advancements of Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) with the in-memory analytic capabilities of Spark. Hortonworks has also launched Hortonworks Community Connection (HCC), a new online collaboration destination for developers, DevOps, customers and partners to get answers to questions, collaborate on technical articles and share code examples from GitHub.

The challenges that big data companies face when dealing with live data range from scalability and availability to real-time demands and structure. The world of data streaming is a complex one as it involves millions of events gathered per day.

IBM is acquiring Clearleap to boost its IBM Cloud platform and accelerate the delivery of video service as a strategic source of data for business. The acquisition is part of IBM's moves to help clients improve access to "dark data" which, because it is unstructured and dark to computer systems, cannot be effectively managed or exploited.

It's estimated that out of the 2.5 billion gigabytes of data which are created every day, 80% is comprised of unstructured content. To help make it faster, easier and more secure for developers to tap into and store growing volumes of unstructured data, including content such as images, documents and videos, IBM has introduced IBM Object Storage, an IBM Cloud service

MapR Technologies has introduced the MapR Converged Data Platform, which integrates file, database, stream processing, and analytics to accelerate data-driven applications and address emerging IoT needs. "Increasingly companies are looking at how they can move beyond batch to a real time paradigm where instead of reporting what happens they are actually incorporating analytics into these streams and impacting business as it happens," said Jack Norris, chief marketing officer, MapR. "That is what is driving this technology advancement."

Harnessing operational big data does not come with a "one size fits all" solution. Organizations are at different points in their data management cycles, and whether that they are building new applications or optimizing existing ones, each needs a unique solution. This was among the key points made during a special DBTA roundtable webinar on harnessing operational big data. The webinar featured Matt Allen, senior product marketing manager with MarkLogic, Kevin Petrie, senior director with Attunity, and Jason Paul Kazarian, senior architect with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

Red Hat has shared the results of a recent mobile maturity survey which revealed that 90% of respondents anticipate increasing investment in mobile application development within the next 12 months. The 2015 Red Hat mobile maturity survey also finds that these same respondents predict their organization's investment for mobile application development increasing at an average growth rate of 24% during the same period.

Do you need fast and effective systems of engagement with enterprise-class scalability? A new on-demand webcast presented by a panel of experts, including Roger Levy, VP Product Management, MariaDB; Chuck Bryan, Global Power Growth Solutions Leader, IBM; and Antonio Rosales, Engineering Manager, Canonical, looks at how to deploy a scalable enterprise solution quickly with MariaDB, Ubuntu, and the latest IBM POWER8 servers.

Red Hat has announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2, the newest release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. New features and capabilities focus on security, networking, and system administration, along with a continued emphasis on enterprise-ready tooling for the development and deployment of Linux container-based applications.

Working with Red Hat, IBM continues to expand the new IBM POWER8 systems hardware and features. IBM's latest linkage with Red Hat revolves around the new IBM Power System LC family of servers, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2.

Located in Argentina's capital city of Buenos Aires, the Instituto de Tecnologia ORT has been partnering with IBM and the Power Systems Academic Initiative (PSAI) to help deliver post-secondary education to students in the Digital Electronics for Industrial Automation program. Specifically, they are currently taking advantage of courseware and the Power Systems Academic Cloud to teach its Multitasking Operating Systems course, a core requirement of the program.

LSU has collaborated with IBM to deploy a powerful supercomputer named Delta to advance big data research in Louisiana. The name references both the Mississippi delta region and the use of the term in the sciences to mean "change."

The history between SUSE and the IBM mainframe goes back more than 15 years, observed Michael Miller, SUSE's Vice President of Global Alliances, Marketing and Product Management, and Ross Mauri, General Manager, IBM z Systems, during a keynote conversation at SUSECon 2015.

Cloud represents a sea change in the way that developers work, increasing productivity and decreasing cost, while also providing more flexibility that encourages innovation anywhere, at any time.To further support this flexibility, IBM has launched developerWorks Premium, a subscription model of its developerWorks community that provides developers with exclusive, member-only curated tools and resources for IBM Cloud.